The View from the Forest: A Memoir

By Frank Hirst

I am not heroic. I have never been a soldier or travelled extensively. My adventures have been low-key but perhaps unique. They have formed the basis of my stories, some of which are presented here. In some cases, the first person is used; in others, the third person. Sometimes a name, such as Will, is used, but they are all based on my personal experiences woven into story form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524574291

Frank Hirst

He was born in England in 1939,immigrated to Canada, settled in the Ottawa Valley where he graduated in 1959. He started teaching in a rapidly expanding Ottawa, so rapid that he taught in the well named Odd Fellows hall near the school. He taught for two years there, then two each in Northern Ontario and the Yukon. He returned to Queens University and began teaching secondary school until 1990 when he took early retirement.

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The View from the Forest

A Memoir

Frank Hirst

Copyright © 2017 by Frank Hirst.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017900134

ISBN:      Hardcover   978-1-5245-7431-4

                 Softcover     978-1-5245-7430-7

                 eBook           978-1-5245-7429-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/09/2017

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CONTENTS

AWAKENING

BLACK ROCK

BUTCHERING

CAMPING

CHRISTMAS AT SEA.

CHRISTMAS WITH KARL

CARIBOU

DOORS

FLOOD

GOOSE DOWN

HAY BALES

HEARING IMPAIRED

HIS COACHING CAREER

HURTS

KATADIN

KOOTENAY PLAINS

MAKING WOOD

NEW YEAR’S EVE

OKLAHOMA

PARIS

PIGEON ROUNDUP

RATS

SANDBANKS

TALLULAH GORGE.

THE DEMPSTER HIGHWAY

THE GREENHOUSE

THE POND

THE ZAMBONI DRIVER

TREES

SUMMATION

AWAKENING

I call it the retiree’s hour. It’s the sleep-in time between the get-to-work wake up at six o’clock and the more leisurely seven o’clock. But half way through the hour I awake to the click of toenails on the kitchen floor above my bed. There are thirty-two of them on eight feet belonging to our two dogs. They’re big dogs, the old one teaching the young one her feeding tricks. Like land sharks they’re circling in a virtual feeding frenzy, anxious for someone to fill their bowls with kibble and milk and put them down on the floor above me. It’s the dance of the toenails. Put to music we’d have a first rate comic opera.

Very shortly the frenzied repetitive clicking stops. Their food bowls are now on the floor and the feeding lust is upon them. But now that they are not dancing around the sound coming down to me is the dual metallic clanking of their bowls on the tile.

I haven’t mentioned that we live in a piano or a drum. Every sound, every footfall, dropped shoe and whatever else, resounds and amplifies on the floor below. The top floor is one layer of wood over open beams. There’s a false ceiling in the basement but noise dampening is minimal. I can tell from moment to moment what’s going on upstairs.

The dogs polish off their morning portions with utmost dispatch and move on to the next torment. They begin to push their empty bowls around the floor with their tongues, possibly in some vain hope that more food will materialize.

The older dog has been the family pet for about ten years. She’s a cross between a Beagle and a Walker hound, bred to go after deer and keep running and baying. Except that she’s afraid of deer. She ran howling from the one she got close to, which is all well and good because we wanted a pet and not a hunter. But the beagle is a notorious eater, a stomach with legs someone has said. She’s probably the one with the more excited toenails on the floor above, and she adds to the melee with a Walker hound whine.

The young dog is a German short haired pointer, and he’s huge. More horse than dog. When he stands on his back feet and tries to embrace me in his enthusiastic puppy paws his mouth could tear out my throat. He is that big. His ears hang half way to his shoulders and his face is huge and lopsided, with great drooping jowls. He has soulful brown eyes the size of pool balls and a lolling tongue like a wet hand towel. He’s so ugly he’s cute.

At this moment he is using that tongue to polish off the nonexistent remains of his morning portion. Though I am still in my bed I can visualize the scene. Each application of the tongue threatens to engulf the bowl. To watch is to fear that he’ll swallow the whole thing. I envision the path of the object across the kitchen floor; can track its geographic location as it caroms off cupboards and refrigerator and dish washer. I follow its loud metallic skittering across the kitchen tile.

Eventually someone upstairs become aware of the noise and removes the irritation.

By now I’m well awake, and I might as well get up. So much for retiree’s time.

BLACK ROCK

The gods were very close the other night. During a lightning storm the likes of which I’ve never seen, the house was hit. The charge blew the phone connections apart outside, came through the plug on the floor two feet from my head, up the T.V. antenna. It spiralled up a tree on the side of the house, scoring it all the way up. The crash was terrific and Laurie saw sparks.

If we had been smart we would have cancelled our next day’s trip, our hiking adventure. I’m calling it Bad Day at Black Rock, the name of a movie starring Spencer Tracy. The reason to be smart was that we had just weathered quite a violent thunder storm, and the air was still unstable. There could be another storm.

Black Rock is a small state park, and the height is probably an outlier of the Smokeys. The trail is 7.2 miles of North Georgia hills and forest, ups and downs, creeks and bridges mostly made out of fallen logs, unless you’re going to ford the streams in your boots, which we sometimes did if the log bridges looked too precarious or weren’t there at all.

As we started out Laurie picked up a staff that had been left at the trail sign. It was a beautiful day, clear and a hot 85 degrees. Hot for us northerners anyway. The air was thick with high humidity and a number of flies that flew annoyingly in our faces. The trail was well marked but narrow, and often ferns brushed our legs. As you know I’m nervous about poisonous snakes, and not knowing the habits or habitat of the Eastern Timber Rattler or the Eastern Diamondback I said a prayer to the snake spirits to leave us alone through the dense ferns. As it turns out, the rattlers spend their time sunning on the rocky outcrops and leave ferns to us hikers.

As it also turns out, the only time I’ve seen a rattler was in a cage in the Cherokee town of the same name in southern Tennessee just over the border from Georgia. The cage was behind a local restaurant and the reptile was due to be snake medallions on the local menu.

There was water everywhere. Little creeks purled over rocks and deadfalls. We threw in chips of wood and saw mountain trout rise to take a look. Springs seeped out of rocks on hillsides, so that a cupped hand could quench a thirst at any time. The water nurtured a most vivid green, and mosses lay everywhere. The last of the wildflowers were beautiful. A small Georgia trillium especially caught my eye. Rhododendron thickets were interspersed with tall southern hardwoods and conifers, a few hung with bits of Spanish moss at the northern edge of its range. Azaleas were still in bloom, an incredible orange colour. Honeysuckle was just beginning. As a northern gardener I was jealous of all the colourful plants which I cannot grow at home. I’ve tried so called hardy azalea and rhododendron around the house but nothing lived for very long.

Life was everywhere. We stopped to look at insects and moths of all kinds. I photographed a colourful box turtle on the trail. We flushed a pheasant, which flew off a short distance. We crossed a road at about a mile and another at a mile or so further. Creek crossings were frequent.

At about three and a half miles we passed an overlook and a camping area. Then the way got really tough. On the map the trail was short and flat. In reality it went straight up, a hard exhausting climb. My legs and butt began to protest. But at the top a rock outcrop gave a spectacular view of Betty Creek Valley and some dense clouds way off to the west.

Two miniature domestic goats gone wild came to visit and licked salt from Laurie’s hand. They were lovely small goats, half the size of the full grown Saanans we had raised at home, with good stocky legs and healthy attentive faces. I remember our time with goats. I went to a friend’s place to buy ducks and came back with a pregnant doe. By the time we had finished with goats we were milking twenty and selling the kids to the Italians and Lebanese down the road. As I recall Laurie did much of the milking but hated anything goat, especially the milk, butter, and mostly the cheese. But she really took to these little fellows. I myself was glad to be finally rid of our goat herd. They would leap to the top rail of a six foot fence and pirouette like acrobats. Then off to the garden to eat roses and raspberry canes, anything with a thorn or a flower. I was happy when the guy from the petting zoo came to collect what was left after the rabies epidemic.

We stayed for half an hour too long at the top, petting the goats and watching the western sky darken towards us, until it absolutely filled the valley. As lightening flashed and thunder rolled we realized we were in for a soaking.

As we turned back the rain came. It was rain as I’ve never experienced it. Like a waterfall of water, it hit on the back with physical force. We were drenched immediately and there was at least a two hour walk back to the parking lot. The good thing was I’d been carrying a small plastic bag and I put my camera in it. The rain didn’t slack off even a little bit during the entire walk back.

Lightening flashed all around us and thunder crackled and snapped very close and very loud. We could taste the metallic tang of ozone in our mouths, and we actually smelled it. The hairs on our arms bristled with static electricity. We both offered up prayers to the gods to save us, for we were afraid.

Now the forest was oppressive. Everything dripped, drooped, or clung. The rhododendron thickets were lower, darker, and wetter. The trail was slick and often under water as instant streams cascaded along it. The tiny creeks were transformed into torrents of muddy water. All of the crossing points were submerged and the log bridges were awash or had been carried away. We now had to ford those rushing torrents, the water up to our hips and rolling boulders bruising our feet.

Speed was impossibly dangerous. Slow picking of the way was essential. Never once did the rain slacken off. Thankfully it was a warm rain, and I felt the water wash over me.

At one steep section of the trail the water washed down it in a muddy red Georgia clay torrent. Of course we both lost our footing and skidded down the slope in a tangle of limbs and clay. We looked like Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as they slid down that slope in Romancing the Stone. We came to the bottom caked like some Amazonian warriors ready for war. We looked at each other and there was nothing to do but laugh.

Aldo Leopold has written that It must be a poor life that achieves freedom from fear. (Sand County Almanac, Page 134). Coming down off that mountain with lightening flashing and the stink of ozone in our nostrils, we were afraid. I don’t think I have